It is a bit strange, isn't it! My first thought was Intute repository
Search (such an obvious and euphonious name, don't you think? See
http://www.intute.ac.uk/irs/). They apparently cross-search 95
repositories, which doesn't sound a lot. There doesn't seem to be a
way to suggest a repository to them, other than getting it into
OpenDOAR.
They also say "You need to make sure that the repository is
completely compliant with the OAI-PMH protocol. Our harvesting
mechanisms are quite strict, and although your repository may harvest
with less strict harvesters, it may fail if it does not meet all the
conditions for the IRS harvesting". Hmmm. That rather seems to break
one of the Internet foundations: Postel's Law "Be conservative in
what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others" (see http://
blog.dshr.org/2009/01/postels-law.html). People do take OAI-PMH so
seriously, when it's only a tool! Are there not important
repositories that don't talk PMH, but that researchers might like to
search?
OpenDOAR does bang on about research, but at least gives a page to
register (http://www.opendoar.org/suggest.php), and also offers a
reasonably broad approach to contents, including datasets. Your's
might turn out to be one of the few (apparently) UK repositories that
really does do data!
Of course, you could say, what the hell, who searches from these
origins anyway. Link from your home page and a few other places and
let Google etc do the rest.
My suggestion? Do both...
--
Chris Rusbridge
Director, Digital Curation Centre
Email: [log in to unmask] Phone 0131 6513823
University of Edinburgh
Appleton Tower, Crichton St, Edinburgh EH8 9LE
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
On 23 Mar 2009, at 10:37, Michael Emly wrote:
> In a number of postings to this list earlier this month,
> acknowledgement was made that "research" repositories now need to
> take account of material in formats other than text. The argument
> typically is that research outputs can include data files,
> modelling and various other related objects.
>
> While I have no quarrel with such statements, to my mind they
> represent a rather narrow view of the management of information and
> information resources within the HE environment. It is perhaps
> easiest to illustrate this by citing specific examples from LUDOS,
> the multimedia repository being developed for the University of
> Leeds (https://ludos.leeds.ac.uk/). The first thing to say is that
> you will not find any research papers in LUDOS - those are
> currently held in the consortial-run repository White Rose Research
> Online http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ (based on Eprints, which is
> a platform specificallly designed for this type of material).
>
> However what you will find in LUDOS is a number of collections
> which specifically support the research process. 2 prime examples
> are:
> 1. The Timescapes "collection". This is an archive of primary
> research material (records of interviews, etc.) associated with a
> major longitudinal study into "the dynamics of personal
> relationships and identifies".
> 2. Virtual pathology (not yet live). A collection of virtual
> pathology slides from the early 20th century to provide a "rich
> educational and research resource of diseases".
> In both cases, the explicit intention is that the materials
> generated through the research process should support further
> research activity and also be available to support student learning
> (both directed learning and research projects) where appropriate.
>
> Alongside such "research"-oriented collections, there are others
> which have been:
> 1. created explicitly for student learning such as digitised music
> scores
> 2. created to support the University's internal processes such as a
> collection of documents to support EKT activity
> 3. created in order to more generally foster both research and
> learning/teaching (L&T) such as digitised page images of the
> medieval illuminated manuscripts held in the University Library.
>
> The final report of the MIDESS project(funded by JISC and RLUK)
> commented in 2007 on the dangers of establishing too rigid a
> distinction between materials for research and for L&T within the
> repository context and argued strongly for a more integrated
> approach (http://ludos.leeds.ac.uk/midess/MIDESS-final-report.pdf p.
> 20-21). Sadly, there has been too little evidence of that to date,
> at least from what I have seen.
>
> These thoughts arose from a desire to register LUDOS with an
> appropriate OAI-PMH harvesting service in order to make our
> holdings discoverable within a national/international framework,
> but I am having difficulty in identifying one which is not focussed
> solely on research outputs. Can anybody help?
>
> Many thanks
>
> Michael
>
>
> ********************************************
> Michael Emly
> Collection Management Services Team Leader
> Leeds University Library
> tel. +44 (0)113 343 6444
> email: [log in to unmask]
> Postal address:
> Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT
>
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